WHAT ARE We to Do?

THE abolition of war is with the follower of Christ. All true progress is by the way of the Cross. To all sons of men sounds the call of the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

What shall we do then? Shall we leave our frontiers unguarded, our young men untrained? Shall we live as though the Christian ideal were already supreme in a world that has hardly yet begun to understand it? No; but we can keep the Christian ideal before us as the master light of all our seeing. We can check the foolish word that ministers to international distrust; we can try to understand the point of view of nations whose national characteristics differ from ours; we can bring the intrigues of diplomacy into the daylight. And most of all, we can realize anew the significance of the Incarnation. Tu ad liberandum, suscepturus hominem, non horruisti Virginis uterum. In the womb of the Virgin He took upon Him humanity that He might set it free-free to be its true self. For just in proportion as we surrender ourselves to the control of the brute instincts in us, in just that proportion we abrogate our freedom. The gospel of blood and iron is a gospel of slavery.

We are called to a new loyalty to the Christian ideal not only by the desperate need of the world, but also by the revelation of unsuspected capacities for sacrifice, which, as the war has shown, lie buried in human nature until some great occasion makes them spring to life. A new spirit has been born among us. Multitudes who had hitherto lived selfish lives have learned the joy of helping to bear the burdens of others. Women have eagerly sought new forms of service and leaped forward to undertake responsibilities hitherto borne by men. The manhood of the nation has freely

offered itself to meet hardship, pain and death. Men have died in their thousands, not for national gain or hate of their foes, but for the sake of liberty and humanity. By their sacrifice we who still live are consecrated to the service of the ideal ends for which they unselfishly gave their lives. We are dedicated to the building up of that better and fairer world which they died to secure for their fellows. When we remember the price they paid, we cannot wish that our service should be less costly. Human society never seemed more worth saving than it does now; nor were the hearts of men ever more prepared for a great adventure.

I.

CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE.

1/If the principles of Jesus mean anything, they apply to universal humanity. And there can be no insular or national or imperial limitations to the duties we owe to our common humanity. In Christianity, at any rate, there are no aliens or foreigners: "neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, no male and female: for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus." And so we welcome the truth that the religion of Christ is the pioneer of new national careers, by creating a new type of individual character, and a new public opinion.

It was Horace Bushnell's great saying that "the soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul." A regenerate man becomes a new and living force in unregenerate society. Christianity first plants itself in the individual soul, and then works from the centre to the circumference, from the person to the State; creating purer homes, a higher and finer social temper, a sounder and truer type of civilization. And a new public opinion is created. A perverted social conscience, moulding public sentiment, and dominated by traditional prejudices and invincible habits of centuries of superstition, is a rigid and uncompromising factor of amazing force, and a gigantic hindrance to the work of Christ. The individual conditions and ideals of men need to be changed; and the spiritual energies of Christianity represent the only power that can grapple with them and overcome them.

The effects of the war upon the character of women, and the influence of women upon public opinion, must be taken seriously into account by those who see the urgent need for moral reconstruction. The majority of men are far more influenced by the character and the ideals of the women with whom they are in contact than they either realize or are ready to admit. One of the great reconstructive forces after the European convulsions of the past has been the influence of the surviving women. It is difficult to overrate what France owed to them after the Napoleonic wars and the Franco-German conflict of 1870. It is to women above all that the world ought to be able to look with hope for keeping alive the traditions of civilization and the ideals of Christianity and for revitalizing the conscience of Europe; and it would be disastrous for the future if the fine moral characteristics and religious instincts of women have been or are being seriously stunted and withered by the poisonous atmosphere of a prolonged war such as the present one, so different from and so far more demoralizing than any other of modern times.1

2. There are two great arguments against war. The one is economic, the other moral. Both are sound, and they may well be worked together. But the more powerful argument is the moral or spiritual one. And that for two reasons. First, because the ethical and spiritual aspects of the paramount claim of peace carry that claim into deeper currents of our nature, and bring it closer to the innermost springs of human volition; secondly, because by far the most commanding of the argumentative strongholds of the enemy are quite beyond the range of even the most skilfully directed economic fire. The loftiest ideal, before it can be realized on this earth, must encounter material problems, and utilitarian argument has its own proper part to play. Nevertheless, "an ideal which the imagination may clothe with a divine nimbus" will often prove of greater effect in influencing conduct than the clearest motives of expediency enunciated by the reason. Therefore, let us draw upon the forces of religion to drive home the lessons of philosophy, since after our brains have been convinced of what is wise and right, we shall still need a motive to dispose us to pursue it. And until the true conclusion has become "operative in the minds and conduct of nations," the most lucid and cogent logic in the world will be exercised in vain.

1 A. W. Rimington, The Conscience of Europe, 98.

¶ Set up what League of Nations you choose, establish what system you like of limitation of armaments and arbitration of disputes, unless there is widespread among the peoples "a will to peace," and not a "will to war," they will all be as ineffective as building walls to shut out lightning. The truest word was spoken by Goldwin Smith long ago, "The only sure guarantee of peace is morality." 1

II.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL.

1. The man who is to be an influence on public opinion in favour of peace must himself be peaceable. Some of us can recall vividly the unpleasant shock we received when we came upon the new version of the angels' song. On earth peace among men in whom he is well-pleased." It seemed to substitute for a simple, flowing song a clumsy bit of prose. Yet it is in the new rendering that we find the real sense of what the angels proclaimed as the meaning of the coming of Christ. It was a great gift which had come to the world; but it was not an outright gift of peace and goodwill, "born in heaven and radiant here." The song of the angels, and the Gospel of the Christ whose birth they sang, made clear the way of peace, how it could be gained and kept here on earth. It could come only among "men of good pleasure," men whose lives were pleasing to God, and men whose hearts were full of goodwill toward other men. "Peace through goodwill "-that is what the angels sang. Not peace the gift of God; rather peace the fruit of God's Spirit in the hearts of men; peace the product of goodwill between man and man, and between man and God. The hearts of men must be purified, their minds enlarged, their wills changed; love must be made the dominating force throughout the world's life. There must be goodwill, with all which that implies, love in place of hate, patience instead of hasty resentment, confidence instead of suspicion, justice in place of exploitation; the fear of being unjust must be stronger than the fear of being unjustly treated. Goodwill must become not merely an amiable sentiment, but an operative force, in the life of the world.

¶ "The Prince of Peace" works, as at the first, through those

1 Sir Herbert Samuel, The War and Liberty, 125.

souls whom He has made His own. Through them He reaches and leavens the mass around. Any of us can contribute something to His work, or can refuse the contribution. And each soul that is at peace with itself and with God, works thereby for the cause of universal peace; works for the harmony of the Church and of the world; works for the credit and glory of the "Prince of Peace." "1

2. Whilst, then, the lovers of peace will do all that they can to promote the international use of every means offered for the maintenance of peace, and especially the League of Nations, yet the direct concern of our faith in Christ is not so much with expedients as with tempers and affections. And the properly Christian spirit, if it responds to the heavenly voice which is bidding it claim public affairs as one sphere of its duty, cannot fail to be a powerful influence in the promotion of international peace.

In so far as his abilities and influence are of any value, the Christian man will throw them all, and on every occasion, on the side of peace, not because he is of necessity a peace-at-any-price man, but because he knows that the war passion is so strong in the world, and has such an immense backing amongst those who live by it and for it, that the help of every believer in peace is needed to produce anything like a balance of power between these forms of faith. Sane, reasonable, intelligent, the Christian will know that in opposing war he is opposing one of the strongest lusts of the human heart-the lust to kill. And he will expect no easy victory.

All turns finally on the measure of justice and mercy which individuals acknowledge, and on the number of just and merciful men within the governing democracies of the civilized world; and so Christianity, the religion of individual redemption, remains the sure hope of humanity, and the pledge of ultimate peace. Only where the Prince of Peace sets up His invisible but allembracing Kingdom are the fierce and selfish rivalries of secular Powers held in check, and the fair potencies of human life disclosed. Justly, then, did the Evangelist picture the coming of Jesus as the bringing of peace to the world.

3. What does this demand of us?

1 H. P. Liddon, Advent in St. Paul's, 269.